


sucker punch

by danielmorgans



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/M, disgustingly in love people are disgustingly in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:52:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6511402
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/danielmorgans/pseuds/danielmorgans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack wakes up on a Tuesday, after two weeks of being dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	sucker punch

**Author's Note:**

> so, like whooooo boy. three things; 1. i wrote this at 4am, be gentle with me. 2. i've literally never written butch before and i am Afraid but i tried my dudes. 3. my lone wanderer jack is a big crying baby who can't deal with emotions so sorry about her. 
> 
> anyway, uh, enjoy it.

Jack wakes up on a Tuesday, after two weeks of being dead.

“Oh my God,” she moans, rolling over and burying her face in the too-hard pillow, “can you not?”

Butch lets out something that’s half strangled laugh, half sob, and climbs onto the bed behind her, wrapping himself around her obnoxiously and pressing his face into the back of her neck. She struggles in his grip, in a manner weaker than she would ever admit to, before sighing in resignation.

“You’ve got five minutes.”

Butch scoffs, breath brushing over her skin, and a shiver rushes down her spine before she can stamp down on it. She can practically see his smug grin as he, somehow, presses closer. “I thought you were dead. I get a day, at the very least.”

“Come on,” she says, trying to blink back the sudden onslaught of memories, and the accompanying fear, “I was barely dead.”

He doesn’t call her out on the way her voice shakes, just tightens the hold he has on her. Jack finds herself grabbing one of his hands and clasping at it tightly with two of her own. “Doll. You didn’t see yourself. Charon looked damn pretty in comparison.”

Jack absolutely doesn’t giggle. “I’m telling him you said that.”

“Still a teacher’s pet,” Butch mutters.

Jack drives her elbow back, not even half as hard as she usually would. Butch still lets out a pitiful moan and practically rolls his body on top of hers.

“Asshole, you’re gonna fuckin’ smother me.”

If she was gonna be honest, and she really tries not to be, Butch’s body weighing down on hers is kind of nice, comforting. It’s like it’s just the two of them, like if she just stays like this, nothing can get to her. She turns under him, back hitting the lumpy mattress, blinking up into his dumb, too close face. He stares right back, all ridiculously long eyelashes and pretty pink lips.

Honestly, he looks terrible. A few shades too pale, eyes heavy with sleepless nights and mouth bitten to all hell.

Jack reaches up and presses her thumb to his bottom lip. “Thought you stopped.”

“It was that or the hair.” His lips curves a little, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“So, what’d you do while I was out? Sit by my bedside, candlelit vigil? Did ya hold my hand the whole time?”

“Nah,” he tosses back, “Charon took Tuesdays through Thursdays.”

Jack huffs out a laugh, glancing away and trying to process the knowledge that he did spend the entire time sitting beside her bed, probably holding her damn hand. In that moment she really wishes he were a better liar. Her gaze drifts back when a hand settles in her hair.

Butch is staring down at her, eyes shining, and settled somewhere high on her left cheek. “Next time you plan on going all goody two-shoes, tell me first, yeah?”

She means to tell him to go screw himself. Or maybe that she’ll just leave him nice and safe in Rivet City. But she opens her mouth and what comes out, breathless and stilted, is, “I love you.”

Butch freezes all at once, mouth falling open in wordless shock. A moment later, the fact that she actually just said those words settles in, and Jack turns a furious shade of red. She tries to violently fight her way out from under Butch, but he’s a dead weight on top of her, and his hands move quickly to wrap around her wrists, more old, vault learned, instinct than anything else.

“I will murder your _goddamn_ face. Let go of me, you no good-”

Butch doesn’t let her finish. His chapped lips are pressed to hers, angle all wrong, teeth clacking together, hard and awkward. It’s one of the worst kisses Jack has ever been involved in, but she presses up and in, anyway, shifting until his bottom lip is caught between hers. It’s still terrible, tastes like something died, too rushed, but it also kind of makes Jack want to cry.

She doesn’t realise she _is_ crying until Butch pulls back, brushing tears away softly and leaving fleeting kisses in their place. He’s so gentle about it that she just cries harder, a vicious and embarrassing cycle that it takes the better part of five minutes to kick.

When she manages to pull it together enough to speak, Butch is looking down at her, thumb absently trailing over her cheek. “Last time I cried in front of you, you literally ran away from me."

He makes a show of rolling his eyes. “Wasn’t lookin’ to get my ass handed to me by your dad.”

“Sure, that’s what it was.”

“Hey, I ain’t afraid of some tears. I’m an emotional guy. Real in touch with myself.”

Jack smirks, feeling more at ease, equal parts overjoyed and upset that they’re just going to ignore her slip up. “Oh, yeah. You’re definitely _in touch_ with yourself. All of Megaton knows that by now.”

If Jack didn’t know to look for it she wouldn’t even have noticed the barely there blush brightening his cheeks. “Doll, if you wanted a ticket to the show you just had to ask. You don’t gotta listen from a room over.” He smirks, wide and slow, sleazy and annoyingly charming. “Hell, maybe I’d even call you up as an assistant.

Jack scoffs and wraps her arms around his neck, pulling his head down so she doesn’t have to look at his dumb face anymore. “In your dreams, Princess.”

“Every night,” he says with a wistful sigh, tucking his face into the space between her shoulder and neck. She reaches a hand up as he settles, running her fingers through his hair, which only looks half as bad as the rest of him. It’s probably the only reason he’s letting her get a hand in it.

The silence settles, warm and comfortable, and for once, Jack feels no unrelenting impulse to fill it with noise, or to get up and do something. She lets herself take the moment, sure that the minute she gets up and walks out that door, and she’ll have to eventually, there’ll be a million different things for her to do. A hundred different people to talk to, and, really, she’d rather just be dead for another week.

Butch is talking, she realises, a moment too late. Whatever he said is nothing more than a brushing of lips against her neck. “What?”

He heaves a sigh, overdramatic as all hell. “ _I said_ , that I love you too. Maybe, if you weren’t so caught up in yourself, and paid some attention to me for once, Nosebleed, you woulda heard the first time.”  

He drags it out slow, like if he keeps talking he can cover up what he just said, but Jack’s brain kind of started screaming after those three words, so she’s not really sure what he’s saying, because he’s still fucking talking.

“Oh my God,” she hears herself snap, but it’s distant, like she’s underwater, “can you not?”

There’s a heavy silence and then Butch shakes.

Her entire body goes on red alert all at once, fight or flight kicking in, even though she’s not entirely sure if she’s preparing to fight Butch or herself, maybe. It takes a moment to realise that he’s laughing. He’s shaking because he’s laughing. Half-choked like he’s trying to swallow it down.

When he pulls back to look at her, he’s flushed and grinning, and Jack’s heart does something stupid and painful in her chest. “Hey,” he says, and the tone of his voice lets Jack know that she fucked up somehow and is going to pay for it in a very painful way, “love you.”

She can feel her face heating up like crazy, heart going wild in her chest, and Butch is smiling down at her, smug, but there’s something soft and fond around his eyes.

Jack doesn’t know what to do with the tangled mess of emotion in her chest, and Butch is opening his mouth, and he’s going to say it again because he’s a fucking asshole, so in a moment of panic, Jack punches him in the face, a little harder than she means to.

“ _Fuck_ , Jackie!”

And, yeah, that’s definitely a split lip.


End file.
